Journey Map
The Current Booking Journey
My team wanted to understand the current flight booking journey on Expedia and identify areas where sustainability information may be helpful and engaging.
Sustainable information can be added to flight tabs.
Sustainable information is only available in upgrades.
Overall, we learned that sustainable information is currently minimal and buried while also being segmented by individual airlines.
User Research
Motivating Our Users
For my team to gain a better understanding of current sustainability initiatives, we analyzed how Expedia’s competitors and other industries outside of travel were engaging with sustainability.
Booking.com has vague information on their website about their sustainability initiatives.
Seventh Generation provides easy to read and understand information on what their products are doing in terms of sustainability. Ecosia clearly tells the user that the company plants trees after a certain amount of searches.
Ecosia allows the user to have a leaderbaord with friends to compete to see who plants the most trees.
Ideation
Raising awareness in subtle and appealing ways
Our team worked to create quick sketches inspired by our research on motivation, eco-guilt, and sustainability initiatives.
Guerilla Testing
More concern about flight pricing than sustainability information
Our team evaluated our designs to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our two design concepts.
We decided to merge the ideas as they represented a different approach to motivation and needed to provide better definitions and context for our design. We also realized that price is ultimately what travelers care about most.
Wireframing
Establish fair information about the sustainability levels of each flight & use a familiar design element to indicate sustainability
Our team wanted to know what users would want to know and what perks they would want to receive when they join a sustainability community. Below are our two key ideas.
We created a community that environmentally conscious travelers may opt in to join. When they join, users would be shown sustainable information about different airlines.
Sustainable Community
Filters and Rewards
When looking for flights, users are prompted to with sustainability filters that they can apply. When applied, flight results are tagged with relevant filters and the Expedia points that they may earn.
Cognitive Walkthrough
The visual hierarchy of flight information needs to be updated for how user's interpret flight information
Our team tested with four participants and found that users prioritize 1) price 2) location 3) sustainability filters. The call to action prompts to join the community are lost in the visuals.
Reflection
This was one of my first projects in my UX coursework. I learned a lot about agile workflow and the importance of testing early and often. I don't think we would have been able to get to the point we were at without being able to test with out user group and classmates as much as we did.
This project also aligned with my goals for building sustainable and community rich designs. It was a wonderful learning experience that paved the way to my design career and goals.
Final Design
Combining community engagement and actionable ways to fly sustainably that also addresses price concerns
Our team decided to combine the two ideas, using the well received features to create a new design called “the Hive”.
We decided to merge the ideas as they represented a different approach to motivation and needed to provide better definitions and context for our design. We also realized that price is ultimately what travelers care about most.
Community
An information page that pushes travelers to join for the ability to gain more Expedia points
Filters
Travelers can filter by different sustainability metrics. The results would be tagged with these results
Points
An information page that pushes travelers to join for the ability to gain more Expedia points
Merging Designs
OUR CHALLENGE
How might we design an experience that will empower travelers to make sustainable choices without guilting them or distracting them of their primary goal of traveling?
Consumers are becoming more aware of their environmental footprint in all aspects of their lives with travel being one of them. Sustainable travel is an up-and-coming trend in the travel industry.
ROLE
UX Researcher &
Designer
CLIENT
Expedia
YEAR
08/2022 - 12/2022